Program TAPS into healing process for military families

They ran around Del Monte Beach early Friday, playing silly games, giggling like kids at summer camp, hugging and high-fiving, permitting themselves at long last to step outside their grief and enjoy life again.

Forty middle-aged people from all over the country — all parents of men and women who died in the U.S. military — converged on Monterey for the weekend to participate in a retreat sponsored by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a national nonprofit group.

The three-day gathering, which concludes Saturday, includes team-building exercises, speedboat rides, horseback riding, a scavenger hunt and, most important, time to bond with others — parents, like them — familiar with the emotional pain they endured since the day they learned their child died.

"When the Marines came to our door, one of the first things they told us was that we needed to get in touch with TAPS. I had no idea what TAPS was," said William Griffith, a Virginia Beach, Va. resident whose son, Maj. Sam Griffith, was killed Dec. 14, 2011.

Griffith said his son deliberately made himself a target to distract the enemy who had pinned down his unit in Afghanistan. Maj. Griffith's 20 cohorts, including British Special Operatives and Afghan police, made it home.

"We went first to a national event in Washington, D.C., and attended seminars that basically taught us that what we were feeling, what we were going through, was normal among people who were in the same situation," Griffith said. "At this (Monterey) event, there are 40 people who have come together to relate the stories of their losses and how they're coping with that loss. You come away from a retreat like this feeling like you know some of these people better than you know members of your own family. The camaraderie is awesome."

Clearly, so was the fun. Team leaders from TAPS joined the staff of Adventures By The Sea, host of the event, to lead campers through games and activities that included hoop-tossing, puzzle solving, sand sculpting, a strange game of tag and a competition in which fruits, vegetables, shellfish and poultry were launched by slingshot to teammates who tried to catch them in beach towels.

"It was good ... very good," said Alicia Steward, a Modesto mother whose son, Senior Airman James Carlton Steward III, died 365 days earlier at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.

"If you break down in tears, or laugh, or just space out in the middle of a sentence, the people around you here understand why. Your brain kind of disconnects when you get the notification."

Airman Steward committed suicide, his mother said. An American on active military duty commits suicide every 25 hours and about 20 veterans kill themselves every day.

"It's amazing to be among those who understand your pain," said Bunnie Jacquai, a San Diego resident whose son, Army Sgt. Cody Legg, was killed June 4, 2008, in Iraq, along with two squad members he was attempting to rescue. "To be in a setting like this, where you can laugh and cry and instantly become kindred souls ... it's just priceless."

TAPS was founded in 1984 by Bonnie Carroll, whose husband died in a plane crash while on active duty in Alaska.

"What Bonnie discovered through her own experience was that there wasn't a lot of support offered to the families of people who had been lost in the military," said Erin Jacobson, a deputy director with TAPS. "So she decided to fill that void by creating this organization."

TAPS has 44,000 people in its database, many of whom participate in the annual convention in Washington, D.C., or one of the retreats the organization stages each year in places such as Nashville, Tenn., Lake Placid, N.Y., Savannah, Fla., and other venues.

"It gives people a comfort that comes with connecting with people who are in the same situation they're in," said Renee Martone, a retreats coordinator for TAPS. "At home they don't always have that safety net of being around people who are living through a similar experience."

Griffith said his first retreat, in Lake Placid, left he and his wife exhausted after four days, but craving more.

"When it was over, we went back to our lives," he said. "We all felt like we not only had lost our children, but now we had to say goodbye to our friends, too. We weren't ready to go home because we knew we had to wait till the next retreat before we'd see everybody again."

Additional retreats are held each year for spouses, siblings, and children of loved ones who have died in military service.